Friday, October 21, 2011

View 1 / Champion Papers / 1960



This was certainly a strange publication for a paper company. It came in 1960 when the Red menace was going strong and eternal vigilance was required from all right-minded citizens to prevent a Commie takeover of the lands of liberty. The editorial is something one would expect from the defense industry who obviously had an interest in promoting Sixties paranoia and patriotism. Why Champion Papers thought the subject matter would help sell papers is a mystery to me.
    Noel Martin, a Cincinnati based designer and well known for his elegant museum catalogs in the Fifties, did the creative work. A note about the typography, on the last page, says the display headings were set in Schadow semi-bold designed by Georg Trump and imported especially for View from the Weber type founders in Stuttgart, Germany. The text is in ten point Melior.
    The brochure is quite large at thirteen by eleven inches, using various Champion papers and printed with a very dull black which looks rather effective on some pages. The inside front and back covers used a silver ink.
    I think it’s an interesting publication because of the subject matter though it has none of graphic dazzle and visual excitement of Champion’s remarkable Imagination series that started only three years after View was published. I wonder if there were any subsequent issues?
 















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